scarecrow

Etymology

It is formed from English scare + crow,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from the verb scare and the noun crow.^[2][5] It is a compound of a verb and its object, the same kind of formation as daredevil and cutthroat.^[7][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

A person employed to scare birds away from crops: 1553, in Thomas Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique.^[2][3][8] Dictionary.com dates the word to 1545–55.^[6]

Semantic evolution

The first scarecrows were people, often boys or old men, who kept birds off the fields;^[2][8] Hendrickson notes that they were also called crow-keepers.^[2][8] The figure of straw and old clothes set up in a field is implied by the 1580s according to Etymonline,^[3] recorded from 1592 in the 1989 edition of the OED and in 1606 in the current one,^[9][2] while Merriam-Webster dates that sense to 1573.^[4] Figurative use for something that frightens without being dangerous followed in 1589,^[2] and after 1590, in Spenser's Faerie Queene, it was applied to a gaunt or ridiculously dressed person.^[2][3] The Mapping Metaphor project counts it among the farming words used for bodily shape from the late 16th century.^[10] Older English names for such a figure included shewel and fray-boggard, and Middle English had skerel.^[3] Johnson (1755) defined it as an image or clapper set up to frighten birds, and so any empty terror.^[11] A verb, to frighten as with a scarecrow, was used from 1593 to 1675.^[2] In 19th-century British underworld slang a scarecrow was a boy who helped a pickpocket and could be handed over to the police,^[12] in the Second World War a weapon or manoeuvre meant only to deter (1943),^[2][5] and in American CB radio slang of the 1970s an empty police car parked to slow down traffic.^[13]

Timeline

• 1553 – a person employed to scare birds.^[2][3]
• 1589 – figuratively, something that frightens without real danger.^[2]
• 1590 – a gaunt or ragged person, in Spenser.^[2]
• 1592 – a figure dressed in old clothes, set up to frighten birds from crops.^[9] The current OED's first example is from 1606, and Merriam-Webster dates the sense to 1573.^[2][4]
• 1593 – verb, to frighten as with a scarecrow (obsolete by 1675).^[2]
• 1866 – in underworld slang, a pickpocket's young helper.^[12]
• 1943 – in military slang, a weapon or manoeuvre meant only to deter.^[2][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A figure made to look like a person, usually of sticks, straw and old clothes, set up in a field to frighten crows and other birds away from crops: The farmer dressed the scarecrow in his old coat.^{[14][15][4][2]}
2. Something that frightens but does no real harm; a bogey.^{[4][14][15][2]}
3. A very thin, gaunt or badly dressed person.^{[14][15][4][5]}
4. (rare) A person employed to scare birds from crops.^[2][5]

Word family

• scarecrowish

Related words

• scare
• crow
• daredevil
• cutthroat

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c Hendrickson, Robert (2008), The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 4th ed., New York: Facts on File
9. ^ a b Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Mapping Metaphor with the Historical Thesaurus, University of Glasgow, mappingmetaphor.arts.gla.ac.uk
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
13. ^ Dalzell, Tom; Victor, Terry, eds. (2013), The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2nd ed., London: Routledge
14. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
15. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins